Praise

The fresh practical insights of ‘Friend & Foe’ underscore the potential benefits of disseminating research results beyond the ivory tower… the authors perform a significant public service by pulling back the self-imposed veil that academics drape over their most socially relevant research.

Their approach yields fascinating and often counter-intuitive examples…The book aims high and largely fulfils its promise of handing the reader tools to be a better friend and a more formidable foe.…if you cannot shift between competition and co-operation according to the situation, you are doomed to lose out.

But is there a little bit of Mr Trump in all powerful people? This question kept occurring to your columnist while reading a new book, ‘Friend and Foe’, by Adam Galinsky and Maurice Schweitzer. The two academics are among the pioneers of a technique called ‘power priming’, that helps people feel more masterful. They find that, once primed for power, even the most reticent people experience significant changes in their behaviour.

Combining their original research with existing social and psychological studies, the authors cover a broad spectrum of situations, including how to earn trust, how to recognize deception (and why cuckoo birds are masters of the art), how to get your way by seeing it “their” way, and more. By incorporating colorful anecdotes to illustrate their points, the authors of Friend and Foe make the science easier to follow. And the occasional bullet points and short chapter summaries help clarify the advice